I am looking for quarter-sawn tonewood boards. I am not building a piano but speakers using a similar principle of resonance of soundboards of pianos. I have found this Swiss website Quarter sawn tonewood for grand piano, piano, harpsichord and harp :: Tonewood-florinett but I am wondering if you know where I could buy quarter-sawn boards (spruce). Thanks
Quarter-sawn tonewood boards
- Thread starter rtacconi
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Cabinetman
Established Member
Well what I do know is that such stuff is expensive and often thin, I’m sure you have researched it but when I built my studio monitors the idea was solid and sound absorbing, and stuffed full of wool. Things may have changed, it was a while ago.
profchris
Established Member
What thickness? Guitar wood usually comes at around 6 mm rough sawn, to be planed down to 2.5mm or so.
For thicker boards you might contact Thorogoods, just N of Clochester so fairly close to you. I'm sure they sell spruce. You'll want to pick through their stock, which is what you have to ask about in case that's a problem for them.
For thicker boards you might contact Thorogoods, just N of Clochester so fairly close to you. I'm sure they sell spruce. You'll want to pick through their stock, which is what you have to ask about in case that's a problem for them.
Timberline and Exotic Woods UK also sell tonewoods for guitar building. Although their websites show guitar-specific size products, you might try to contact them and check if they have other sizes.
Ollie78
Established Member
A good hardwood dealer should be able to help you. If they have spruce they may let you go through the stack, the problem is as soon as they call it "tonewood " the price goes through the roof. Tyler hardwoods, yandles, have good selections.
Consider woods other than spruce, like Sycamore, Basswood, Maple, Mahogany ( can be found in old furniture ).
Consider woods other than spruce, like Sycamore, Basswood, Maple, Mahogany ( can be found in old furniture ).
thetyreman
Established Member
david **** has some top quality wood for instruments, that's what I'd recommend.
Is there any history of building speakers out of tonewoods? In an acoustic instrument it has a purpose as the resonance imparted in the wood will increase the volume made by the strings. With a speaker enclosure the drivers are the important part, no material will make a terrible driver sound good and if you buy really high end ones isn't there a chance that you could be introducing unwanted overtones which would colour the sound? Most high end speaker enclosures are made of baltic birch ply or even MDF. As said by @Cabinetman the trick to studio monitors is dense, heavy woods and lots of soundproofing packed inside so all you really hear is the driver(s).
Cabinetman
Established Member
Yes thank you for the back up, I was beginning to think I had got it wrong haha.
Ttrees
Iroko loco!
Hello, these videos from the renowned guitar builder Jose Romanillos might be worth watching,
not sure if it's in this video or in the next, but the takeaway from it being the preference for the right grain, and laminating select pieces rather than making other compromises.
Whether you think the glue affects matters is up to you.
All the best
Tom
not sure if it's in this video or in the next, but the takeaway from it being the preference for the right grain, and laminating select pieces rather than making other compromises.
Whether you think the glue affects matters is up to you.
All the best
Tom
E O Burton in Brentwood, Brooks Bros in Maldon, and Thorogood in Ardleigh - as @profchris mentioned are the nearest suppliers who can help you, albeit as @graham88 & @Cabinetman have mentioned I would question why you would want to choose a wood that will flex given that will add potentially unwanted tones and resonances to the loudspeaker.
I have built many high-end speakers over the years, one I recollect included a 1inch poured concrete lining the idea being that this additional layer would significantly dampen any inherent resonances in the cabinet design. It kinda worked and unsurprisingly the resultant speakers were effing heavy..
Even renowned modern day designs like the open baffle Linkwitz LX521 suffer from cabinet flex and at least one German company offer a kit for it manufactured from Panzerholz which is a phenolic resin impregnated birch based composite material which as the name implies is pretty tough and in fact difficult to machine as it will quickly blunt TCT tooling
I have no idea who stock this in the UK however this company do specialise in this type of material but be aware it is likely hideously priced and similarly tough to machine -
Permali Deho
Edit: Just to give you an idea how expensive it likely is I just browsed their website and their products are specified and used in the following industries-
Cryogenic, Railways, Electrical, Aerospace, Motorsport, Nuclear and Marine
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I would try Timberline in Kent, very helpful guys there
thetyreman
Established Member
yes there are early speakers were made from solid wood not MDF, but they didn't sound as neutral as MDF that's been veneered, I agree with you that BB grade birch ply or MDF is best for speakers, most of them are veneered MDF, my neumann studio monitors are made from aluminium and they sound perfect to me, no colour at all, totally neutral in an acoustically treated space.
Interesting. I'm assuming they're a machined billet of Aluminium to keep the mass as high as possible? Don't suppose you know the model so I can have an in depth look? I work in a metal engineering process so these sort of things interest me. Very surprised that ally doesn't ring out at all but I trust Neumann's engineers to get it right, never hear many bad things said about them.
thetyreman
Established Member
I've opened them up to repair an electronics fault, they have dracon/duvet type material to reduce resonances, the design is also really well thought out, the speaker is the KH120A, it comes from an older design the Klein and Hummel O110D, Neumann bought them out hence the KH in the product code. Not sure how they make it exactly, likely CNC is involved because of the amount of precision that's needed.
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